NEWS FROM BRITISH COLUMBIA'S
COASTAL COMMUNITIES
As Senator for British Columbia, one of my priorities has been to ensure that BC’s coastal communities
enjoy a sustainable and vibrant future. A key partner in this work is BC’s Coastal Community Network, a representative
council for coastal regional districts and tribal councils, and host of the annual Conference of Coastal Communities.
British Columbia’s coast is home to twelve regional districts, ten tribal councils and dozens of municipalities and First
Nations communities. Of the twelve regional districts, nine fall outside the large urban centres of Vancouver, Victoria and Nanaimo.
Communities on our “rural coast” are heavily dependent on resource industries, such as forestry, fishing and mining.
Over the past decade a number of factors, including huge changes in the traditional resource sector and significant government
and industrial downsizing, have caused severe economic decline and a debilitating loss of population in coastal communities as
people move to larger centres in search of work.
The downturn of the pacific salmon fishery in the early 1990s first brought a group of coastal British Columbians together to find ways of turning these tides and promoting economic development in BC’s coastal communities. In April of 1993, representatives from local governments, First Nations and the fishing industry came together in Port Alberni, at what became the founding conference of the Coastal Community Network (CCN).
The CCN was created at this time as a representative council with a mandate to promote the economic and social well being of West Coast communities and ensure local access to the natural resources that have sustained them for generations. Since then, the focus of the organization has broadened to include other resource and industrial sectors in coastal BC – fisheries, forestry, offshore oil and gas development, information technology, tourism, and related transportation and infrastructure issues.
As "the voice of BC’s coastal communities”, the CCN's focus is to link coastal communities, develop common ground on resource and marine policy, and articulate the needs of BC's communities to senior government, industry, the media and the public. Their annual Conference of Coastal Communities is one forum for this. The 2005 Conference, "Communities at Risk: Focusing on Our Future" was held in Richmond, BC, and brought together over a hundred delegates representing communities, First Nations, government and industry, to voice their concerns and articulate their vision for the future of the coast. I had the pleasure of attending the conference and chairing its closing plenary session, which featured presentations by BC Treaty Commissioner Jack Weisgerber, and David Marshall, the Executive Director of the Fraser Basin Council (pictured here at right).
For more on the annual Conference of Coastal Communities, the Coastal Community Network and their work on BC's coast, visit their website: www.coastalcommunitynetwork.ca